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Arabica Robusta

South Sudan: No power-sharing without political reform | CODESRIA - 0 views

www.codesria.org/spip.php

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Whereas the ruling party in the north was rightly and roundly criticised for electoral malpractice and fraud in the elections of April 2010, there was not even muted criticism when it came to similar practices by the SPLM in the South that same year. When the referendum on self-determination returned a 99.8% yes vote in the South, the “international community” lauded the result — when they would have pooh poohed it anywhere else in the world.
  • Conveniently, this posture masks the responsibility of both Western powers and the regional association known as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in condoning the sorts of practices that have prepared the ground for the rebellion. In particular, it masks the responsibility of two powers: the US and Uganda
  • Their relentless competition over water and pasture generated periodical cycles of violent attacks between them. Evans-Pritchard described the Nuer as a “wild offshoot of Dinka.” The problem with the Nuer, he wrote, was that “every Nuer, the product of hard upbringing, deeply democratic and easily aroused to violence, considers himself as good as his neighbour.” Evans-Pritchard was describing a deeply democratic culture. He was describing less the Nuer problem than the British colonial problem with the Nuer: the Nuer were a problem for him and for the British because they were averse to centralised authority.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The British political problem was how to administer and rule mobile semi-pastoral communities with a tradition that combined independence with co-existence in a multi-ethnic region. Their solution was to politicise ethnic identity in a series of steps.
  • Ironically, when an autonomous South Sudan began to organise its local government after 2005, it built on the British colonial model rather than attempting to reform it.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 07 Mar 14
       
      Why?
  • From the Boll rebellion that led to the establishment of SPLA in 1983 to independence in 2011 and now, every internal power struggle inside the SPLM has had personal, political and ideological dimensions.
  • Two issues have featured prominently in the mobilisation by ambitious leaders: parity of community (ethnic) representation in the new power, and different views on the direction in which that power would move.
  • Garang’s great contribution was to inspire a vision that made possible a single rallying point around which to mobilise discontent throughout Sudan. His single most important failing was to subordinate this vision to the struggle for power and personal ambition. Faced with the demand for reform, Garang moved to consolidate power.
  • Amnesty has turned into a massive payout of the national budget as a way to retain the loyalty of commanders. South African sources estimate that over 50% of the government’s budget was going into paying the armed forces before the December 15 rebellion. The government’s wage bill, they told IRIN, accounts for about 80% of the military budget.
  • When the Nuer officers resisted, the whole affair got out of hand. On their part, government officials described it as an “unsuccessful coup attempt by Dr. Riek Machar in collaboration with a number of former cabinet ministers.” In his speech in Angola a few days after Ugandan troops intervened in this conflict, President Museveni admitted there were two versions of what happened on December 15, and that there was as yet no way of telling which was right. And yet, Ugandan troops intervened in support of one side and against the other.
  • Already, there are civil society groups calling on the “international community” (in particular, the ICC) to hold accountable all perpetrators of gross violence. At the same time, there is a chorus of voices calling for a return to power-sharing. Both are likely to prove counter-productive.
  • Jok Madut Jok, one of the country’s leading intellectuals, answered with obvious resignation, referring to President Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar: “The two men will eventually sit down, resolve their issues, laugh for the cameras, and the thousands of civilians who have died will not be accounted for.” Without political reform, reconciliation and power-sharing will more than likely be a dress rehearsal for another crisis.
  • Whereas in South Africa, it was the end of the Cold War that made room for internal forces to arrive at a political resolution of the conflict, the situation in South Sudan is radically different: it will need greater involvement from the region to create conditions for meaningful reform. For this to be possible, one needs to keep in mind both the internal and the external reality.
Arabica Robusta

Peace, Justice and Ethnic Conflict | CODESRIA - 0 views

www.codesria.org/spip.php

africa development international governance news industry world codesria mamdani

shared by Arabica Robusta on 08 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Do not conflate criminal with political violence. Political violence may be criminal, but it is more. Political violence has a constituency • Political violence is seldom a stand alone act. It is most often part of a cycle of violence. When it comes to a cycle of violence, victims and perpetrators often change sides.
  • The South African transition was marked by three characteristics. To begin with, the Cold War had ended and external involvement in South Africa was at an all-time low. Second, the internal situation had reached an impasse. Both sides dropped their maximum goal – victory or revolution – so as to give the political process a chance. Each side de-demonized the other; yesterday’s enemies became today’s adversaries. The difference between an adversary and an enemy is this: you can talk to an adversary, but you have to eliminate an enemy. Finally, when the fighting ended, there was no judicial process. The way ahead was forged through a political process.
  • The first set of concessions is what Joe Slovo, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, called sunset clauses. They promised that the personnel of the old apartheid state – including its security forces, judiciary and civil service – would survive into the post-apartheid order. The state personnel were granted impunity. Only the political establishment had to subject itself to an inclusive electoral process. Second, there was constitutional protection for white-owned property; this protection was translated into a local government law. Third, there were no court trials of perpetrators; there was no judicial process. Instead, there was an amnesty for all. The much-lauded TRC really functioned as a mock quasi-judicial process: no matter the quality of the truth offered, it had no choice but to grant amnesty.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • I want to suggest that South Africa offers us deeper lessons. To begin with, it calls on us to broaden and deepen our notion of justice. In the era that followed independence, we thought of justice as mainly social justice. Today, we have narrowed down the understanding of justice to criminal justice, with lawyers as its primary custodians.
  • The negotiations that ended apartheid brought us political justice. That political justice was a reform of the political system – an end to juridical and political apartheid.
  • The twist in Darfur had to do with relations between peasants and nomads. Nomads have a soft notion of borders. They move across borders. So the British decided that nomads who move over large areas of land shall have no tribal homeland. These were the nomads of northern Darfur, the northern Rizeigat.
  • How is this relevant to Kenya? Think of the violence in the Rift Valley. The deep background is colonial. The details are different. But the questions are the same: who has right to land? This is not a question of right against wrong, but right against right. In contention are two sets of rights, each with a different history; one colonial, the other post-colonial; one tribal/ethnic, the other national. The perpetrators may be different, but the issues are not so different.
  • In Kenya, you have had two experiences over the past few decades. The first was the national movement for a constitutional reform. You forged a national coalition, a coalition across ethnic and ideological boundaries. My friend Willy Mutunga called it ‘Constitution-making from the Middle. This attempt at political reform was an exemplary effort, one that inspired the region. But you failed to build on it. Instead, you turned to a contradictory initiative – don’t be vague, go to Hague. The Hague initiative undercut the gains made in the earlier period. Whatever national movement you had built around the constitutional reform process was split along ethnic lines, as each side mobilized in pursuit of revenge, rather than reform, and a different breed of lawyers took over.
  • Soon after the end of apartheid, its lessons were followed in Mozambique, where Renamo had unleashed the most brutal terror against children and women. It was a practice reminiscent of the kind of terror unleashed by LRA in Uganda. That is where the similarity between Uganda and Mozambique ends. The two governments followed entirely different paths: a political reform in Mozambique, and war and punishment in Uganda. You only need to look at the consequences to appreciate the difference: the war is over in Mozambique where the leadership of Renamo sits in Parliament. The war continues in Uganda where the leadership of LRA is still on the run.
  • I want to argue that the issue for us today, the big issue, is political violence. This violence is testimony that we have failed to come to grips with the legacy of colonialism – and the challenge of decolonization
  • The first set of concessions is what Joe Slovo, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, called sunset clauses. They promised that the personnel of the old apartheid state – including its security forces, judiciary and civil service – would survive into the post-apartheid order. The state personnel were granted impunity. Only the political establishment had to subject itself to an inclusive electoral process. Second, there was constitutional protection for white-owned property; this protection was translated into a local government law. Third, there were no court trials of perpetrators; there was no judicial process. Instead, there was an amnesty for all. The much-lauded TRC really functioned as a mock quasi-judicial process: no matter the quality of the truth offered, it had no choice but to grant amnesty. Apartheid did not end in the courts. Its end was negotiated at the conference table. It could not have been otherwise, for at least one reason.
  • Perhaps the most instructive is the case of Zimbabwe, where SADCC under Thabo Mbeki successfully resisted demands by the West that the region isolate Zimbabwe through sanctions. The result was to give time for an internal dialogue. Contrast this with Kenya where the ‘international community’ – along with an influential internal constituency – distorted the internal political process by threatening to give priority to court trials. It is of secondary significance whether these trials were to be internal or international.
Arabica Robusta

Of liberation & betrayal | Frontline - 0 views

www.frontline.in/...article5497084.ece

south africa mandela intervention corporate neoliberalism

shared by Arabica Robusta on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • White South African mining magnates, billionaires and businessmen were meanwhile meeting the exiled leaders of the ANC, such as Mbeki, in European capitals, to offer deals and hammer out the economic structure of post-apartheid South Africa; a favourite meeting place was a majestic mansion, Mells Park House, near Bath, in England.
  • The white ruling elite had prepared for such outcomes with great deliberation. It had methodically nurtured a new black entrepreneurial and professional class through loans, subsidies, etc., whose interests predictably came into conflict with those of the black working classes and the poor who were the mass base of the anti-apartheid struggle in all its aspects. Like any typical national bourgeoisie in post-colonial Africa and Asia, members of this newly confected class aspired to little more than becoming intermediaries between global capital and the national market.
  • Thabo Mbeki—once a member of the central committee of the SACP, trained in economics in England and in guerrilla warfare in the Soviet Union, an eminent leader of the ANC who criss-crossed continents during the 1970s and 1980s to connect the exiled political leadership with the externally based military units, Vice-President under Mandela and President of South Africa after him—could, in the fullness of time, gleefully say, “Just call me a Thatcherite.” Self-enrichment is at the heart of varieties of Thatcherism. Or, as Deng Xiaoping famously said: “It is glorious to be rich.”
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  • On July 11, 2013, John Pilger published a piece on his interview with Mandela after the ANC had taken hold of power, had abandoned the black working classes and the poor to their fate, and was launched upon a wave of brisk privatisations and deregulations, which led, among other things, to fabulous enrichment of the new ANC elite, Mandela’s close associates and Cabinet Ministers in particular. Pilger reports that when he said to Mandela that it was all contrary to what he had said in 1990, the latter shrugged him off with the remark, “For this country, privatisation is the fundamental policy.” Not only that! Mandela was frequently seen in the company of the most corrupt of his Ministers even after he relinquished power.
Arabica Robusta

Mandela's greatness may be assured, but not his legacy - 0 views

johnpilger.com/...-be-secured-but-not-his-legacy

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 20 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Still, he was well used to deferential interviews and I was ticked off several times - "you completely forgot what I said" and "I have already explained that matter to you". In brooking no criticism of the African National Congress (ANC), he revealed something of why millions of South Africans will mourn his passing but not his "legacy".
  • Once in power, the party's official policy to end the impoverishment of most South Africans, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), was abandoned, with one of his ministers boasting that the ANC's politics were Thatcherite."You can put any label on it if you like," he replied. "...but, for this country, privatisation is the fundamental policy.""That's the opposite of what you said in 1994.""You have to appreciate that every process incorporates a change."
  • Few ordinary South Africans were aware that this "process" had begun in high secrecy more than two years before Mandela's release when the ANC in exile had, in effect, done a deal with prominent members of the Afrikaaner elite at meetings in a stately home, Mells Park House, near Bath. The prime movers were the corporations that had underpinned apartheid.
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  • In 2001, George Soros told the Davos Economic Forum, "South Africa is in the hands of international capital."
  • Ironically, Mandela seemed to change in retirement, alerting the world to the post 9/11 dangers of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. His description of Blair as "Bush's foreign minister" was mischievously timed; Thabo Mbeki, his successor, was about to arrive in London to meet Blair. I wonder what he would make of the recent "pilgrimage" to his cell on Robben Island by Barack Obama, the unrelenting jailer of Guantanamo.
  • The apartheid regime's aim was to split the ANC between the "moderates" they could "do business with" (Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Oliver Tambo) and those in the frontline townships who led the United Democratic Front (UDF).
  • Mandela, too, fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid. He saw this as part of "reconciliation". Perhaps he and his beloved ANC had been in struggle and exile for so long they were willing to accept and collude with the forces that had been the people's enemy.
  • White liberals at home and abroad warmed to this, often ignoring or welcoming Mandela's reluctance to spell out a coherent vision, as Amilcar Cabral and Pandit Nehru had done.
Arabica Robusta

MEET DAN THE MAN, KING OF THE CONGO - 0 views

www.allthingspass.com/...0February%202008%20%5B1%5D.htm

africa development international governance industry world corporate exploitation gertler

shared by Arabica Robusta on 30 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • While there has been a lot of Western media fanfare over the Kabila governments’ supposed “independent” review of mining contracts, little substantive change can be expected.[64]Structural factors exploit the Congolese people and lands and benefit white businessmen, arms dealers, bankers, and their embraceable black agents. Big business benefits from perception management articles well-placed in media to give the impression that the international system is just, that there are watchdogs, checks and balances.
Arabica Robusta

Who is lying about Newmont's Akyem ''Galamsey'' Mine? | Feature Article 2013-11-22 - 0 views

www.ghanaweb.com/...artikel.php

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 24 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • I understand that the President of Ghana Chamber of Mines (one Dr. Tony Aubynn) and an External Affairs and Communications Director at Newmont (one Adiki Ayitevie) have waded into the debate, suggesting that it’s been the practice and Newmont is not doing anything illegal. This is indeed a bad practice and an illegal one. Even though Dr. Aubynn indicated his profound respect for rule of law it is clear that such respect cannot be extended to all laws and some aspects of the constitution in the country.
  • This time around the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Mines and Energy (one Dr. Kwabena Donkor) expressed shock that Newmont has started mining gold at its Akyem mine even before its mining lease is ratified by parliament. I understand some other MPs have expressed similar worries. Dr. Donkor has consequently described Newmont’s operations at the said mine as illegal, hence the company is engaging in ‘‘galamsey’’ mining activity – a very popular categorization for widespread illegal small scale mining activities in the country.
  • I understand that the President of Ghana Chamber of Mines (one Dr. Tony Aubynn) and an External Affairs and Communications Director at Newmont (one Adiki Ayitevie) have waded into the debate, suggesting that it’s been the practice and Newmont is not doing anything illegal. This is indeed a bad practice and an illegal one. Even though Dr. Aubynn indicated his profound respect for rule of law it is clear that such respect cannot be extended to all laws and some aspects of the constitution in the country.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • This time around the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Mines and Energy (one Dr. Kwabena Donkor) expressed shock that Newmont has started mining gold at its Akyem mine even before its mining lease is ratified by parliament. I understand some other MPs have expressed similar worries. Dr. Donkor has consequently described Newmont’s operations at the said mine as illegal, hence the company is engaging in ‘‘galamsey’’ mining activity – a very popular categorization for widespread illegal small scale mining activities in the country
  • I understand that the President of Ghana Chamber of Mines (one Dr. Tony Aubynn) and an External Affairs and Communications Director at Newmont (one Adiki Ayitevie) have waded into the debate, suggesting that it’s been the practice and Newmont is not doing anything illegal. This is indeed a bad practice and an illegal one. Even though Dr. Aubynn indicated his profound respect for rule of law it is clear that such respect cannot be extended to all laws and some aspects of the constitution in the country.
  • I understand that the President of Ghana Chamber of Mines (one Dr. Tony Aubynn) and an External Affairs and Communications Director at Newmont (one Adiki Ayitevie) have waded into the debate, suggesting that it’s been the practice and Newmont is not doing anything illegal. This is indeed a bad practice and an illegal one. Even though Dr. Aubynn indicated his profound respect for rule of law it is clear that such respect cannot be extended to all laws and some aspects of the constitution in the country.
  • I understand that the President of Ghana Chamber of Mines (one Dr. Tony Aubynn) and an External Affairs and Communications Director at Newmont (one Adiki Ayitevie) have waded into the debate, suggesting that it’s been the practice and Newmont is not doing anything illegal. This is indeed a bad practice and an illegal one. Even though Dr. Aubynn indicated his profound respect for rule of law it is clear that such respect cannot be extended to all laws and some aspects of the constitution in the country. He ough
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
  • Is citizen vigilante still in the country? And can this brouhaha over the legality of Newmont’s Akyem mine be settled in the Supreme Court? May be we should call on one Kwaku Kwarteng (MP for Obuasi) who has recently taken another multinational mining firm (Anglogold Ashanti) to court for usual breaches in the mining sector.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - What does President Obama "know" about Ethiopia's "election"? - 0 views

www.pambazuka.net/...93094

africa development international governance pambazuka democratization ethiopia

shared by Arabica Robusta on 11 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • In the foregoing few words, Hailemariam Desalegn actually revealed his (I mean the TPLF’s) entire three-pronged strategy on how they plan to organize the theft of the 2015 election and repeat the 2010 crushing victory: 1) use state media and all other resources to hoodwink the people of Ethiopia that the 2015 election process will be democratic, free, fair and credible; 2) implement “our institutional process and our laws and regulations [that] are perfect” by 3) imposing on all political parties “the code of conduct” that his party has “put in place”. The TPLF's three-pronged strategy is actually the perfect game plan for the perfectly rigged election. The late Meles Zenawi wrote the perfect election rigging rulebook and “implemented” it in 2010. As a result, his party won the perfect election with 99.6 percent of the parliamentary seats.
  • Prof. Hagmann’s observations also point to the total absurdity and futility of any “elections” in Ethiopia in light of the dogmatic belief of the leaders of the TPLF (and its handmaiden the “EPDRF”) in their birthright to rule: This is visible in the way EPDRF sees itself – namely as a vanguard party that has earned the right to lead the state, to determine what development is and how democracy is to be organized. Therefore, whoever is against the EPDRF is ‘anti-development’ or ‘anti-peace’ and whoever opposes its policies is anti-state.
  • It is a known known to me that President Obama gave his implicit blessings in 2010 when the TPLF regime declared victory by 99.6 percent. He turned a blind eye and deaf ears. (Not so when he lectured Robert Mugabe for winning the presidential "election" in Zimbabwe in 2013 by 61 percent: “Zimbabweans have a new constitution. The economy is beginning to recover. So there is an opportunity to move forward but only if there is an election that is free and fair and peaceful so that Zimbabweans can determine their future without fear of intimidation and retribution.”) An election that was won by 61 percent is not "free and fair" and deserves public condemnation but an election won by 99.6 percent is free and fair and deserves private accolades?!
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  • Meles Zenawi ripped the final EU EOM election report as “trash that deserves to be thrown in the garbage”. He said, “The report is not about our election. It is just the view of some Western neo-liberals who are unhappy about the strength of the ruling party. Anybody who has paper and ink can scribble whatever they want.” Of course, Meles was legendary for his mastery and exquisite delivery of gutter language in political discourse. He could out-tongue-lash, out-mudsling, out-bully, out-vilify and out-smear any politician on the African continent. Meles also called the 2005 EU EOM Report a “pack of lies and innuendoes”.
  • Since he believes civil society is the core of a democratic process, President Obama should use his leverage to ensure civil society institutions function freely in Ethiopia before the 2015 "election". What is President Obama’s leverage? Aid money. The hard earned tax dollars of the American people. American tax dollars given to African dictators in the name of helping Africans but end up in African dictators’ offshore accounts. Aid money talks and is heard loud and clear by the tone deaf TPLF bosses. As Dambissa Moyo documented in her book Dead Aid, the TPLF regime got a whopping 97 percent of its budget from foreign aid. Simply stated, the TPLF regime will not survive a single day without aid transfusion from the pockets of hardworking America taxpayers into its blood stream. President Obama needs to wag the annual welfare aid check in the faces of the salivating TPLF panhandlers and tell them what he told Africans in Accra Ghana in 2009:
Arabica Robusta

Colin Bruce named to #2 post in World Bank's Africa department | Bank Information Cente... - 0 views

www.bicusa.org/...Article.3820.aspx

africa bank bicusa bruce colin development international kenya kibake news organizations world

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Bruce came under fire from critics of the Kenyan government during his tenure for presiding over a nearly twofold increase in Bank disbursements to the country despite what the FT termed "persistent evidence of high-level graft." In March 2008, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) made available on its website a leaked report by the World Bank's Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) on evidence of corruption in Bank-funded projects in Kenya.
Arabica Robusta

As Global Wealth Spreads, the IMF Recedes - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2008052303187_pf.html

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 26 May 08 - Cached
  • Ghana had joined a long list of developing countries in Africa and beyond enjoying record periods of growth, with the robust economy leaving it no longer in need of more IMF cash.
  • The IMF, founded in 1944 to foster the reconstruction of the global economy in the wake of World War II, is entering its largest period of upheaval since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Over the next year, the Washington institution will slash its 2,900-person workforce by 13 percent through a combination of buyouts and some layoffs, reflecting a loan portfolio shrinking so fast that the IMF is seeking to sell off $6 billion in gold reserves to create a new long-term source of income.
  • The weakest nations in Africa remain the most subject to IMF policies because the fund represents one of their few financial lifelines. But even in better-off countries like Ghana -- a West African nation of 23 million -- the IMF still wields clout. Lenders including the World Bank and foreign-aid agencies in Europe and the United States continue to look to the fund to certify a nation as being fiscally responsible before offering grants or loans.
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  • In Ghana, the IMF has been credited with helping to promote less wasteful government spending and worked with the World Bank to forgive Ghana's $381 million debt earlier this decade. It allowed Ghana to shift funds once earmarked for debt payments to social spending. Schools that had operated in the open air were moved into classrooms while new medical clinics cut infant mortality and the deaths of women at childbirth, according to the Social Enterprise Development Foundation of West Africa, a regional nongovernmental organization.Yet other fund-backed policies have proven difficult for the population. As Ghana sought to increase water access, the IMF recommended "full cost recovery." Ghana's water company moved to install prepaid meters and disconnect nonpaying customers, according to a report from Jubilee USA, an anti-poverty nonprofit group in Washington. As a result, Ghanaian women, who traditionally bear the burden of providing water for household use, were forced in some instances to dig unsafe, shallow wells to access drinking water.
  • The IMF has insisted that Ghana eliminate those subsides and pass the full cost of electricity production to its people. It would mean higher power bills just as residents are trying to cope with increases in gas and food prices. The government has opted for a Solomonic solution. It will begin passing the higher costs to corporate users by later this year but has provided no timetable for extending the burden to individual users.For some here, even that is too much. "The IMF has been pushing us for years," said Leticia Osafo-Addo, chief executive of Samba Processed Foods, a maker of hot pepper sauces, juices and spices that will likely see its electricity bill soar by year's end. "We can and should manage on our own. It is time for that to stop."
  • Arabica Robusta on 26 May 08
     
    Ghana had joined a long list of developing countries in Africa and beyond enjoying record periods of growth, with the robust economy leaving it no longer in need of more IMF cash.
Arabica Robusta

Food riots hit West and Central Africa | Bank Information Center: Monitoring the projec... - 0 views

www.bicusa.org/...Article.3702.aspx

cameroon development food imf international riots security violence

shared by Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Strauss-Kahn has been criticized for publicly supporting President Bush’s stimulus measures to address potential recession in the U.S. – the opposite of the painful austerity measures the IMF applied during the East Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. But while he has been quick to register the IMF’s concern about a potential food price crisis in Africa, it appears that in this case the IMF will not diverge so radically from past practice: new loans, seldom the best remedy for countries facing humanitarian crises, are the best he has to offer.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08
       
      When will it be surprising again when the IMF/World Bank policy branches prescribe government intervention in more-industrialized countries, and government removal in less-industrialized countries?
  • Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08
     
    Strauss-Kahn has been criticized for publicly supporting President Bush's stimulus measures to address potential recession in the U.S. - the opposite of the painful austerity measures the IMF applied during the East Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. But while he has been quick to register the IMF's concern about a potential food price crisis in Africa, it appears that in this case the IMF will not diverge so radically from past practice: new loans, seldom the best remedy for countries facing humanitarian crises, are the best he has to offer.
Arabica Robusta

Terraviva EUROPE - 0 views

www.ipsterraviva.net/...article.aspx

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  • Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08
     
    ''Africa is not a basket case. The continent is just suffering from the effects of events that it has no hand in and cannot control.'' These are the remarks of Ekplom Afeke, a Togolese activist who is attending the 12th meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) currently underway in Accra, Ghana. Afeke says the continent has been deprived of trade and investment over decades. If that has not been bad enough, the effects of poor environmental management outside the continent are today compounding Africa's crisis of poverty.
Arabica Robusta

Terraviva EUROPE - 0 views

www.ipsterraviva.net/...article.aspx

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  • Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08
     
    Spain's relationship with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also received a boost with a recent cooperation agreement signed between Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain's minister of foreign affairs and co-operation and Antipas Mbusu Nyamwisi, the DRC's minister of foreign affairs. The agreement is aimed at basic social services and the protection of the human rights of more vulnerable social groups such as children and women, through support for local institutions. In addition to basic health, education and transport needs, there will be collaboration in projects for environmental protection and sustainable development, and scientific and technological research. It is anticipated that the development of this agreement will begin with the setting up of a combined commission for evaluation, planning and monitoring, which will meet every four years.
Arabica Robusta

D+C 05/2008 - Tribune - Aid effectiveness: The myth of NGO superiority - Development an... - 0 views

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  • In any case, NGO aid is clustered, and NGOs are deepening the divide between so-called donor darlings and aid orphans.
  • Arabica Robusta on 20 Apr 08
     
    Recent research suggests that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from donor countries do not provide better targeted or more efficient aid than state-run development agencies. They do not seem to even try to outperform the latter by focussing on the neediest or by working in particularly difficult environments.
brian R

Student Uses Faith to give Voice to Forgotten Children - 0 views

www.hks.harvard.edu/...gotten-voices-ryan-keith-feb10

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  • brian R on 19 Feb 10
     
    "As I held her frail hand, I saw her two children, Peterson and Prudence, watch their mother die," said Keith "These kids had already lost their father to AIDS-related illnesses … what would happen with them? Who would advocate for them and make sure they didn't slip through the cracks? Who would make sure their voices were not forgotten?"
Arabica Robusta

Institute for Policy Studies: Africa and the Economic Crisis - 0 views

www.ips-dc.org/...africa_and_the_economic_crisis

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  • The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
  • The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
  • The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
  • a multi-stakeholder forum convened in Tunis at the end of November that brought together leading economists, government officials, and civil society representatives.
  • The forum was the first high-profile event of the newly formed Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA), chaired by Botswana's former President, Festus Mogae.
  • CoDA is driven by African institutions and carves out greater space for civil society to set the agenda. At the forum, Professor Fantu Cheru of the Nordic Africa Institute urged support for "knowledge production on the continent."  The establishment of CoDA is a big step in that direction.
  • We must, as the Tunis Forum convener Abdoulaye Bathily, Senegalese academic and former minister of environment, urges "redefine Africa's development paradigm, and above all, support the emergence of new practices and citizen actions in Africa's public space."
Arabica Robusta

PZN - The G20, China and the implications for Africa - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...55549

china international development africa g20

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  • Beijing has signed currency swap agreements with six central banks: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Belarus and most recently Argentina. These swaps permit those central banks to sell yuan to local importers in those countries who want to buy Chinese goods. This is particularly useful for importers struggling to obtain trade finance as a result of the financial crisis. As such, it's consistent with China's desire to participate in the Group of 20's efforts to support trade financing.'
Arabica Robusta

Rooi Gevaar | Daily Maverick - 0 views

www.dailymaverick.co.za/...2014-07-04-rooi-gevaar

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  • Duarte was most direct. “AMCU and the formation of EFF show similar characteristics. The platinum belt has become counter-revolutionary. They are working together to destabilise the ANC government and the country,” she said.
  • The electoral campaign also coincided with serious challenges to the unity of Cosatu, and the emergence of a right-wing, populist demagogic movement, the EFF, posing as left wing.”
  • Nzimande went on to say: “We must also bear in mind the fact that it has always been the intention of imperialism, monopoly capital, and the apartheid regime, to work towards driving a wedge between the national liberation movement and the progressive sections of the organised working class like Cosatu. Also, it has been the intention of these very same enemy forces to particularly drive a wedge between Cosatu and the SACP.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The ANC and SACP leaders seem believe that Numsa could genuinely disagree with ANC policies and is entitled to go its own way, that the platinum mineworkers are genuinely fed up with their living conditions and that a rebellion was bound to happen, and that the EFF’s strong showing in the election was due to genuine disappointment with the ANC. It would appear that if you find a way to knit up your critics into a neat conspiracy, it then happily excuses you from self-analysis of your role in creating a multiple backlash.
  • The one thing that the EFF, AMCU and Numsa have in common is that they know how to yank the ANC’s chains. The ANC almost always falls into the trap because instead of acting like the party in power, its default position is to behave as if it under attack and a victim of a conspiracy.
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